Shopify integrates with ‘zero-fee’ Solana Pay, prompting businesses to adopt crypto transactions

Solana Pay, the decentralized payment protocol by Solana Labs, has integrated with Shopify. This strategic integration allows millions of businesses on Shopify’s platform to leverage Solana Pay for crypto transactions with zero transaction fees until 2024.

A post on the Solana official X profile, linking to a TechCrunch article read;

“Today, Solana Pay integrates with Shopify, empowering the millions of entrepreneurs and merchants on Shopify to accept fast, web3 native payments with no transaction fees through the end of 2023.”

Launched in Feb. 2022, Solana Pay is built on Solana, and the initial payment option for this integration is USDC, the second-largest stablecoin by market capitalization. The choice of USDC, as Josh Fried of Solana Foundation told TechCrunch, is strategic, given its close ties to the dollar and its regulatory oversight. However, he hinted at future considerations for adding SOL.

SolPay is also integrated into the Solana Saga mobile phone and available on any device connected to a Solana wallet. The Saga had its price slashed at the start of August to just $599, down from $999 at launch.

Solana and Shopify partnership benefits.

Over 11 million active accounts on Solana will potentially gain access to Shopify businesses which, according to TechCrunch, make up 10% of total U.S. e-commerce and $444 billion of global economic activity. However, businesses will likely have to activate SolPay in their merchants’ dashboards to accept payments.

Fried reiterated to TechCrunch the vital role of payments in the crypto space, stating,

“Some people argue the killer app for crypto hasn’t arrived, but it has: it’s payments.”

This sentiment reflects the hope of a shift towards decentralized payment platforms that aim to reduce transaction costs for businesses. Notably, credit card processing fees usually cost a business up to 5% per transaction. In contrast, the average cost per transaction on Solana’s blockchain is one-fortieth of a cent.

The partnership could also enable merchants to set up loyalty programs with minimal development effort. According to Fried, these reward systems could be as simple as launching NFT loyalty tokens that are burnt when a consumer checks out using Solana Pay.

This development, however, comes amid the backdrop of significant changes within the crypto market landscape, as some major cryptocurrencies, including SOL, were recently delisted by Robinhood, Bitstamp, and Revolut following SEC lawsuits against Coinbase and Binance.